Monday, January 09, 2017

The future of parenthood through AI – meet Aristotle Mattel's new parent bot

Parents
obviously play an important role in bringing up and educating their children.
But it’s fraught with difficulties and pitfalls. Parents tend to face this this, for the first
time, without much preparation, and most would admit to botching at least some
of it along the way. Many parents may work hard and don’t have as much time
with their children as they’d like. Few escape from the inevitable conflicts
over expectations, homework, diet, behavior and so on. So what role could AI
play in all this?

AI wedge

Domestic
broadband was the first edge of the wedge. Smartphones, tablets and laptops
were suddenly in the hands of our children, which they lapped up with a
passion. Now with with the introduction of smart, voice activated devices into
the home, a new proxy parent may have arrived, devices that listen understand
and speak back, even perform tasks.

Enter
Aristotle

Enter
Aristotle, Mattel’s $300 Aristotle assistant. They may have called it Aristotle
as both his parents died when he was young, that he was the able teacher of
Alexander the Great or, that Aristotle set the whole empirical, scientific
tradition that led to AI going. To be honest, what’s far more likely, is that
it sounds Greek, classical and authoritative. (Aristotle's view on education here).

It’s a sort
of Amazon Echo or Google Home for kids, designed for their bedrooms. To be
fair, the baby alarm has been around for a long time, so tech has been playing
this role in some fashion, for a some time, largely giving parents peace of
mind. It is inevitable that such devices get smarter.

By smart, I
mean several things. First it uses voice, to both listen and respond. That’s
good. I’ve noticed, in using Amazon Echo, how much I’ve had to speak carefully
and precisely to get action (see my thoughts on Echo here). There may come a time when early language
development, which we know is important in child development, could be enhanced
by such AI companions. It may also encourage listening skills. Secondly, it may
encourage and satisfy curiosity. These devices are endlessly patient. They
don’t get tired, grumpy, are alert and awake 24/7 and will get very smart. Thirdly,
they may enhance parenthood in ways we have yet to imagine.

Child

One aspect
of the technology that does appeal is its personalized voice recognition. It
knows the child’s voice. This could be useful. One area that could lessen
embarrassment on both sides is timely sex education and advice. This could
satisfy the child’s natural curiosity without the angst that child-parent
communications could involve, as long as the child knows it is confidential and
the parent is in control. As the
child gets older, got a dispute over a fact? Amazon Echo or an Aristotle, may
sort it out. Stuck with your homework, these devices will inevitably be able to
help. There’s already an app, Photomaths, the app that students love and teachers hate, that you simply point at a mathematics
problem, and it not only gives you the answer but all the steps in between. Few
parents would be able to do this. Similarly with other subjects and languages.
There’s no reason why the knowledge of the parent should limit the ability of a
child to learn. The important thing is not to let such devices become
substitutes for the horrific Tiger Mom experiences, hot-housing kids with
endless exercises. Learning could be done in a measured fashion. And what
parent wouldn’t want such a device to become an alarm, especially on school
days?

Parent

The Arostotle device
is designed to allow you to track feeds, wet nappies and so on, even buy the
necessaries. What could also be useful is the availability of a source for good
advice on parenting. I can still remember the times when one of my kids got
ill - the sheer panic and worry. We had twins and would have loved good advice, mainly
on what not to do – like tell the one who came out first that he was the oldest
(big mistake as from that moment on he used it as a psychological weapon). In retrospect,
having some intelligent advice on hand would have been useful. For example, being able
to track and give you feedback as a parent when you’re overindulging them,
pushing them too hard. I could see it helping parents hold back when they want
to live vicariously through their children, see themselves as their kid’s best
friend, think they’re perfect (sure sign is when they tell you that Josh or
Sara is ‘gifted’), dealing with conflict, reminding you to be nice to them and
make sure they feel loved and protected.

Not
unproblematic

Now there
are clearly potential problems in this area; the idea that this dehumanizes the
normal parental role, that it could be used as a substitute for real love and
care, the data issue and the possibility of surveillance, then governmental
intervention for bad parenting. Some of this is a bit scary.

Conclusion

But relax, most of this
has been a thought experiment. However, I’m pretty sure, that as the technology gets
better, and this Mattel product already has machine learning and good natural
language processing, there’s a high probability that some of the above ideas
will be realized. Is there any parent who hasn’t, at some time, yearned for
some help, some support? It’s easy if you have that support but what about
single parents, parents with little or no family support, parents who have
children with special needs? At the far end of the spectrum I could even see
such support being given to mothers who suffer from post-natal depression. Pre- and post-natal advice, in situ, personalised?The promise is not to replace parents but help parents survive the
inevitable storms. Time will tell.

2 Comments:

Enjoying your exploration of AI Donald. How easy would it be for a large enterprise to successfully automate an internal helpdesk using AI and voice recognition? Where all the information is internal, enterprise information? Have you seen this done well